The Science of Doom

In the last article we looked at some results from Grant Petty. In essence they demonstrate the huge variation in the transmittance of CO2 through the atmosphere with the wavelength of radiation. I decided it might be interesting to try and reproduce these results using the HITRAN database. This allows a closer examination of which [...]

Read Full Post »

I thought some data provided in Grant Petty’s excellent book would be valuable as it helps explain some important points about the role of CO2 in the atmosphere. Just recently I was kindly given access to the HITRAN database by Dr. Laurence S. Rothman but I’ve spent a bit too much time in the last few [...]

Read Full Post »

In the model simulations up until now the pCO2 band has been a constant – a fixed absorption band between the wavenumbers 600-800 cm-1. In this article we will see what happens when the band shape changes, but the “area under the curve” stays the same. If you are new to the series, take a [...]

Read Full Post »

Many blogs write about over-simplifications of the radiative effects in climate. Many of these blog articles review simple explanations of how it is possible for atmospheric radiative effects to increase the surface temperature – e.g. the “blackbody shell” model. As a result many people are confused and imagine that climate science hasn’t got past “first [...]

Read Full Post »

In Part Four we took a first look at overlapping gases. pH2O’s absorption band was changed to overlap pCO2′s absorption band. And remember that pH2O has a much higher concentration in the lower atmosphere. For those who haven’t followed the series so far, these are fictional molecules with only a passing resemblance to the real [...]

Read Full Post »

In Part Three we saw some results of absorption and emission in the atmosphere but later I commented that the model had some flaws. Take a look at Part Three for more about the model. The Model Flaws and Update The model (v0.3.1) had poorly defined boundaries and as a result the downward flux through [...]

Read Full Post »

In Part Two, we looked at the beginnings of a very simple 1-d model for examining how the atmosphere interacts with radiation from the surface. Simplification aids understanding so the model has some fictious gases which absorb radiation – pCO2 (pretend CO2) and pH2O (pretend water vapor). We saw that as the concentrations of pCO2 [...]

Read Full Post »

In Part One I said: In the next part we will consider more advanced aspects of this subject. However, although that is where we are heading, first I want to look at a very simple model and progressively increase its complexity. It may be illuminating. The discussions on the Radiative Transfer Equations at the very [...]

Read Full Post »